Where Are WeGoing?, What Are We?, Where Do We Come From ? (After Gauguin), 2009 / Lenticular mounted on alu-dibon, 3 panels : 0.90 x 1.20 m each

Where Do We Come From ?, What Are We Here For ?, Where Are We Going ?, 2011-12 / The Cat Street Gallery, Hong Kong – HK / Lenticular mounted on alu-dibon, 3 panels : 1.10 x 1.10 m each

Where Do We Come From ?, What Are We Here For ?, Where Are We Going ?, 2011-12 / The Cat Street Gallery, Hong Kong – HK / Lenticular mounted on alu-dibon, 3 panels : 1.10 x 1.10 m each

The video installation entitled What_Next ? is tackling ontological questions through answers provided by Internet search engines. These programmes, including the universally famous Google, are used to find simple and precise information on the World Wide Web.With this installation in mind, Pascal Dombis has collected over the years hundreds of thousands of pictures corresponding to such questions as “Where Do We Come From?’’, “What Are We Here For ?”, “Where Are We Going ?” and in different language context: “Wer sind wir?”, “Où allons-nous ?”, “Dove andiamo ?”, “¿De dónde venimos?”…

In this kind of artistic gesture, the Internet is exploited as a creative process. Dombis makes no selection of the pictures produced. He is not interested in their discrete particularities or aesthetic qualities, but in their excessive accumulation as well as in the various mental scapes conjured up as he goes along. When considered separately, most of the images obtained on the internet from such fundamental questions are indeed of no interest. They specifically do not provide any concrete answer but once juxtaposed and interwoven, give birth to visual spaces containing semantic translations and displacements, which in turn proves to be relevant to the metaphysical questions initially raised.